filename: 309
entry: techreport
title: Interactive Cuts through 3-Dimensional soft Tissue
author: Daniel Bielser, Volker A. Maiwald and Markus H. Gross
address: Institute of Scientific Computing
month: December
year: 1998
keywords: Physically Based Modeling, Surgery Simulation, Soft Tissue
language: English
pages: 8
institution: ETH Zürich
abstract:
We describe a physically based framework for real-time modeling
and interactive cutting of 3-dimensional soft tissue that can be
used for surgery simulation. Unlike existing approaches which are
mostly designed for tensorproduct grids our methods operate on
tetrahedral decompositions giving more topological and geometric
flexibility for the efficient modeling of complex anatomical
structures. We start from an initial tetrahedralization such as
being provided by any conventional meshing method. In order to
track topological changes tetrahedra intersected by the virtual
scalpel are split into substructures whose connectivity follows
the trajectory of the cut, which can be arbitrary. For the efficient
computation of collisions between the scalpel and individual tetrahedra
we devised a local collision detection algorithm. The underlying
physics is approximated through masses and springs attached to each
tetrahedral vertex and edge. A hierarchical Runge-Kutta iteration
computes the relaxation of the system by traversing the designed data
structures in a breadth-first order. The framework includes a force-
feedback interface and uses real-time texture mapping to enhance the
visual realism.